Canadian Airgun Forum

Hey everyone!
Today when I tried to shot with my benji trail np1 .22 xl (950fps version), was not working. Trigger was looses.
So i took it apart and found that the internal piston was dead! Has it ever happened to anybody here?

Anyone know where to order it online for cheap? thanks for your help!

You sure its the piston? Because if the trigger was loose that would prevent it from holding back the piston.

You should be able to get parts from Gravel.

Its the Gas strut

Gas struts can fail, like any other mechanical part. And it's not uncommon for them to fail (gas leaks out).
Fortunately they are readily available and not too expensive. I did some conversions from wire to gas springs a while ago and got parts from Scopes and Ammo.

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Iacio ergo sum

From reviews and other sites and my own personal experience crosman gas struts fail more often then one would expect from such a simple apparatus. And at 40 bucks a crack plus shipping, that's not inexpensive. My Benjamin Prowler is losing power after abou 250 shots. I'm not impressed.

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If your airgun is broken, fix it. If it works, you CAN make it work better. Usually...

I've had many fail and I get emails on it all the time. Some are doa, some leak slowly w/o use, some a little per shot, some leak to a point then seem to stop, some seem fine then one day poof. One I had I bought as a replacement and it was already a year or so old, then sat at home for ~ a year and still had full pressure, more or less. Once installed I only fired a few shots to verify the gun was fine and let it sit for a few months. When I cocked it next the pressure was down maybe a third or so.
So their reliability is a roll of the dice and you can really only cross your fingers, and imo coil springs will outlast them all.
Many are leaking and the owner doesn't know it yet since the gun will seem to shoot fine and the transition is so slow. At some point they realize something is up but it may take a year, or several.
I assumed all leaked at the seal but I had one leak out the butt end, I assume from the little threaded hole but possibly the weld.
Right now about 40-50% of my Crosman # BT9M22 springs (used on the B18 model guns) have leaked. Other gas springs from Crosman and other brands are holding up much better. My oldest is a Trail XL which I think is ~5yrs old and seems just fine.
I think it may be the shaft which is both fatter and rougher than all the other gas springs I've seen. Fatter means more surface area to leak from and it means it's lower pressure. So it's very possible the higher pressure units seal better since it's the pressure that puts force on the rubber seal. Then there's the roughness which may allow air to leak all the time and/or a small amt per shot.
Be careful not to dent or scratch the shaft b/c air will get out that way, and if dented on arrival I'd ask for a new one unless maybe they warranty it. The shaft should have some grease on it but it's likely hidden down inside so you can't tell if it' enough, so I add some. If dry then it no doubt can't seal as well, plus a rough shaft at high speed on rubber while dry is obviously not good.
It is possible to recharge them at home, but if it already leaked then few will have the desire to try, and fewer still will have the tools.
Lastly, if you want to try it, there's another spring that cheaper (~$17CA from Gravel Agency). It's not the right one for the gun but I believe it will on avg have much better odds of lasting. It's also a bit weaker so you may lose some power, and it needs some mods to make fit. I've been meaning to do a power comparo but it's still a back burner test. If you want to try it I can give you details, otherwise I will post when I get around to testing it.

As mention by Dukemeister- and I paraphrase here- stuff fails sometimes.

That being said, the failure rate on the gas struts used in Crosman/Benjamin rifles is NOT high. Over the years since the strut was used by Crosman, many thousands of such rifles have been sold (even in Canada, Canadian Tire alone has sold thousands of these rifles since their introduction), and by online accounts, maybe a couple hundred struts in the US have failed. Obviously there have been more failures than people have documented on US airgun websites, but the failure rate is obviously not high.

In my experience in selling hundreds of rifles and struts, the failure rate is under 2%. That being said, the majority of strut rifles are the older design, regular 'NP' rifles, not NP XL's- which have a slightly longer strut in them and higher pressure- so their failure rate might be higher, but a lot less NP XLs have been sold (especially in Canada) than the regular NP, so it is more difficult to determine.

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